Susan Olden

My mother, Susan Olden, who has died of lung cancer aged 71, was a promising actress who gave up a burgeoning stage and screen career (under her maiden name, Susan Burnet) to raise her family.

Four weeks after graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda) in 1957, she won a leading role alongside Sir Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson in a West End play, Flowering Cherry. "In physical allure," noted one reviewer, "Miss Burnet reminds one of Brigitte Bardot and from a thankless role she draws more than it intrinsically contains."

The play, which ran for over 400 performances at the Haymarket theatre, and later transferred to Broadway, also starred my father Andrew Ray (whose family name was Olden). Romance between the pair flourished, and a marriage proposal followed. But there was one problem, as the newspapers at the time revealed in some detail: Andrew's father, the comedian Ted Ray, at first wouldn't give his consent, believing the couple to be too young to wed (Andrew was then 19, and Susan 20).

The success of Flowering Cherry led to regular stage and television work for Susan, as well as film roles, including playing Cliff Richard's sister in Expresso Bongo (1959) and Tommy Steele's love interest in Light Up the Sky! (1960). But after the birth of her first child, my sister Madeleine, Andrew had an epiphany inspiring him to abandon materialism and return to nature. The family packed up and moved to Suffolk. Susan now embraced a life of apple-picking and digging vegetables. Her brief life in the public eye was over. She didn't mind.

She was born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Her grandfather had arrived there in 1896 as the first war against white-settler rule raged. After she contracted polio as a child, she became especially close to him, spending time in Bulawayo, where he lived. At 15, her family sailed from Cape Town to England for a holiday, and, imbued with a love of theatre and literature by her mother, Susan was accepted at Lamda and offered a scholarship.

Later, when her marriage to Andrew began to founder, she returned with her children to Rhodesia, where civil war was raging. Growing up, she had been largely oblivious to the racial inequities the country was built upon – but this was no longer the case. She protested against government policies, and when she was introduced to the rebel prime minister Ian Smith, refused to shake his hand, instead reminding him – to his obvious discomfort – of the affair her grandmother had apparently had with his father. The joy she felt when she attended Zimbabwe's independence celebrations at Rufaro Stadium in Harare in 1980 was matched by her sadness at her homeland's subsequent turmoil.

In 1986 she returned to England, and for years worked as a BT operator (once telling a surprised John Pilger how much she admired his work when the veteran reporter was trying to get through from some far-flung hotspot).

She and Andrew never divorced, saw each other virtually every day and remained best friends. She missed him desperately after his death in 2003. Susan was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008 and given between six months and a year to live. She never complained and, having outlived her initial prognosis by nine months, completed the Guardian crossword and Sudoku hours before she died.

Susan is survived by Madeleine and myself, her sister, Libby, four beloved grandchildren and a great-grandson.